Assignment Maltese Maiden

by Edward S. Aarons

  “Lee will come to Moscow,” Skoll rumbled. “That has been decided.”

  Durell said grimly, “So the KGB can pick his brains and take over the Hung apparatus for itself?”

  “It was so decided,” Skoll said.

  “Not quite,” Won interrupted. “Lee is not important. But Hung’s organization threatens the People’s Republic of China in close proximity to our borders. Peking must have it, as a measure of self-defense.”

  Anna-Marie said sardonically, “So you thieves are already falling out? And what about General McFee?”

  Neither the Russian nor the Chinese spoke. Durell stood up, still holding the girl’s hand.

  “Let’s go, Anna-Marie,” he said. “We can’t do business here.”

  Chapter 14

  “Your remark is regrettable,” Major Won said.

  “Don’t try to stop us,” Durell said.

  “I must, my dear sir. We have agreed on nothing. And the girl is important to me—to Colonel Skoll and me.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  Durell tried the door. It was locked. Neither Skoll nor Won moved. There was another door across the room. Durell held his pistol and moved with the girl to the second door, through which Skoll had entered. Durell squeezed a short burst at the handle. The racket of the shots bounced enormously around the room. He counted on the thick walls to keep the noise from attracting alarm outside. He kicked the door open. Turning, he saw Skoll reaching under his tunic.

  “Don’t, Cesar. I’ll kill you, if I have to.”

  Skoll sighed. “I am always right. I always admired you, Amerikanski. But you cannot take the girl away.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Durell urged the girl ahead of him. She stumbled, her elfin face pale. The room ahead was small, furnished with a bed, a Fezzan rug, a stool, and a charcoal brazier. Beyond was a narrow, arched corridor and steps going up. From behind him came a sharp call from Major Won, but nothing else.

  The house was a maze of rooms, corridors, and stairways. Several houses had been joined together to form this unsuspected, palatial residence in the middle of the medina. At the top of the stairs, Durell and the girl turned right again. A Libyan woman, wrinkled and middle-aged, with Fezzan tribal tattoos on her dark face, came out of a doorway, and saw him, and gasped, trying to hide her face. She fled ahead of them. From behind came the sound of running feet. Durell could not tell how many thugs Won could muster here. In any case, he didn’t care to meet any of them.

  He tried three doors, one after the other, and found that they led only to cubicles. At the end of the upper hall another stairway led both up and down. From below came a hammering noise, a man’s call in Chinese, the click of metal.

  “Up,” he said.

  “It’s only to the roof,” Anna-Marie objected.

  “Good enough.”

  The rooftops of Libyan homes were usually reserved for the exclusive use of women. Durell held the girl’s hand, flattened against the cool stone wall, and nudged open another door with the muzzle of his gun.

  Sunlight blinded him. The wave of heat was like a heavy blanket thrown over his head. He glimpsed a tiled rooftop, benches, a small palm and potted plants, the edge of the roof. Beyond was the blue of the bay, the strip of olive orchards, the white of Tripoli’s houses, and the dun-colored desert in the far distance. The Mediterranean glared at him from the left, achingly blue. The thudding feet behind them seemed to be closer, coming up the last flight of stairs.

  Something hurtled at him from the wall to his right. A flat hand smashed at his gun, a club hit his shoulder and sent pain surging through the wound at the nape of his neck. Durell swung hard, saw the man’s Chinese face contorted with effort. The man went down, knocked over a pot of geraniums, came up again. Durell kicked him in the jaw, hauled him upright, hit him again. The club flew aside. The man fell back over a bench, struck his head on the tiles, and lay still.

  “Come on.”

  He ran to the edge of the roof and looked over the low wall. The alley was four floors down. He went back, shut the door, dragged a heavy wooden bench from the rooftop garden, and wedged it against the planking just as someone smashed at it and tried to slam it open. It wouldn’t hold for more than a few moments. He spoke quietly to the girl. “This way.”

  “We’ll never get out.”

  He went to the left, parallel to the alley below, and came to the other side of the house. Another rooftop beckoned, only one level down. He said, “We’ll jump.”

  She was dubious. “It’s pretty far.”

  “You’re athletic enough. You can do it.”

  The door behind them shivered as the men smashed at it again and again. The bench was loosening from where he had wedged it.

  “Jump,” he said again. “Together, with me.”

  She stepped up on the low wall and leaped without further hesitation. It was not as far down as it had seemed. The girl rolled lithely, came up with a spring of sturdy leg muscles, and shook her head. Durell ran with her to the next roof. There was only a three-foot gap between them. An easy leap, and they were atop the next house. But beyond was a lane that joined the alley fronting Won’s house, and the distance was too risky to span.

  “Down,” he said.

  A flight of stone steps that hugged the wall led them where he wanted to go. The door at the bottom was not locked. He pushed through cautiously, keeping the girl behind him. After the glare of sunlight on rooftops, it took a moment to identify the shadows within. Nothing human. A small bed, a table, the smell of cooking from below. The wail of Cairo’s inevitable radio, muffled by closed doors. A baby cried.

  “All right,” Durell said.

  There was dim shouting from the rooftops behind them but obviously no police alarm. He went through the first room quickly and came face to face with an old man and two young children. The man’s eyes widened in sudden terror.

  Anna-Marie spoke in quick Arabic. “It is all right. We will not harm you.”

  “Allah protect me, I—”

  “Be quiet,” Durell said. “We leave at once.”

  The two children began to shriek, and it didn’t sound much different from the Cairo radio. Durell and the girl raced down two flights of steps to the ground floor. A young man in a striped barracan came out of one of the rooms and tried to grab at Durell’s arm. Durell swiped him aside and they ran on.

  He opened the house door on street level in time to see Keefe and Perozzo turn the corner into the alley. . . .

  Chapter 15

  It was good to rest between clean sheets, with a cool night wind blowing through the open windows of the Grand Phoenicia Hotel in Valetta. The fights of the harbor of Malta shone inside, from Floriana to Kalkara. Durell stretched and sighed and Deirdre said, “Poor Sam.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “You should really sleep around the clock.”

  “Keefe isn’t sleeping. Or Perozzo. Neither are Hung, the Major, or Skoll. How is our signorina?”

  “A very tough little girl,” Deirdre said. She added, “Very beautiful, too.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “She’s with Perozzo down the hall. He’ll see that she doesn’t go off on her own, after her young man.”

  Durell nodded. With Keefe and Perozzo’s help, they had escaped the medina, recovered their battered Mercedes, and gone to the address Anna-Marie had indicated. The big villa overlooked the harbor from the palm-lined boulevard, hung with Libya’s revolutionary flags. The house was empty. Madame Hung had indeed vanished. A terrified male servant, a black Fezzani, told them that everyone had gone to the airport. Malta had been mentioned. It was enough for Durell. In ten minutes he returned to the hotel room, recovered his radio, and twenty minutes later he was in contact with Lieutenant Fisher aboard Hammersmith. Afterward, they waited until nightfall at a spot beyond Zanzur in the west, when Fisher sent in a small boat to pick them up.

  From there it had been a quick helicopter ride to a small carrier of the Six
th Fleet, then another flight by Navy plane to Malta. The NATO base at Malta had been ordered dismantled by the newly independent Maltese, who now flirted with the Russians, but the USA still had some landing rights, and Durell’s group was cleared without problems. Lieutenant Fisher had been efficient about arranging papers for them all.

  “Sam?”

  “Yes, Dee.”

  “Don’t get up. It’s eleven o’clock. The Maltese are early-to-bedders. Nothing can be done until morning.”

  “Is there any bourbon?”

  “I got some for you. Shouldn’t you have a doctor to look at all those scrapes and bruises?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Sam, darling. . . .”

  The fights of a car turning into the Phoenicia’s parking lot moved across the white-painted baroque ceiling. Durell sat up on the bed he shared with Deirdre and poured himself a drink, and then didn’t touch it. She said, “What is it, Sam?”

  “She’s here. Somewhere nearby. I can feel it in my bones. I don’t want you in this, Dee.”

  “Are you talking about Madame Hung?”

  He nodded. “If I’d known she was involved in the job, I’d never have let you come here.”

  “I’ve never seen you so worried about anyone, Sam.”

  “I’m afraid of Madame Hung.”

  “Because of me, you mean.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you couldn’t have stopped me. We’re both taking orders from the senator. You can’t change a Q directive.”

  “I want you to go home, Dee.”

  She slid up behind him on the bed and put her arms around him. He felt her warm, dark-copper hair against his shoulders, smelled her perfume, sensed the silken-smooth roundness of her breasts against his back. Deirdre was the most beautiful woman in the world for him, the most desirable, the most important. Her serenity had saved him before, clearing his mind to go straight to the point of his problems in the past. He knew she could take care of herself. On other assignments, she had been cool and efficient, and he told himself she was not his responsibility, that he could not afford to be diverted because of her presence. But he knew that nothing he might say or do could make her leave.

  “So you couldn’t find any trace of McFee here?” he asked.

  “Not yet. We won’t talk about it now. You need rest.

  I’m sorry about Damon and Mills, but I’m glad it’s not you, being buried in the sands of a Libyan ghibli. Not you, Sam. Make love to me. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

  “There’s no time. You don’t know Madame Hung.”

  “You’ll get her this time, Sam.” She laughed softly. “Am I losing my appeal, darling?”

  “Never.”

  “I wish you’d marry me, Sam.”

  “Tell me about Signorina Bertollini. She said she has a house here.”

  “Not here. On Gozo. Next island north. We’ll go there tomorrow, Sam. Tonight is mine.”

  The cool wind blowing off Valetta Harbor made the window curtains flutter. Deirdre had chosen the room well. There was a single door, no balcony, no line of fire available to snipers from adjacent buildings. He looked at the white cubes of Malta’s buildings, at the shipping in the harbor, at the domes of Byzantine and Norman architecture, the relics of so many invasions and tyrannies, bloody sieges and endless wars that had tortured Malta throughout its long history. The British had left their final stamp on the little island, naming the streets, constructing government buildings, installing modern naval equipment and stores, shipyards, golf courses, cricket fields. The Maltese had it all to themselves now. In the giddy aftermath of independence, they wanted no part of any other nation’s presence here. There were too many memories of desolation under past conquerors. From the Phoenicians to the Greeks, the Turks and the Spanish, they had lived under the rule of others. Now they were a nation unto themselves. Durell sighed. He hoped they could keep it that way.

  Deirdre drew him back on the bed again.

  “Make love to me, Sam. Please. Now.”

  He shivered suddenly.

  “You’re cold, Sam.”

  “No.”

  “Let me warm you. You’re tired and cold.”

  He was thinking of Madame Hung, but he let her draw him back to the bed again. The moonlight touched her smooth, exquisite body. Her eyes were luminous. She smiled and touched him.

  “Sam?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  Chapter 16

  He lay in darkness with the ghosts of dead men chuckling at him. Charley Mills, Tom Damon, faceless men without identity, were pointing skeletal fingers, their mouths black with rottenness, deep-sunk eyes gleaming in fleshless faces. He could not remember them all. Around him was the fetid, sickly-sweet odor of death sticking in his nostrils and clinging to his skin. He felt massive pain, as if bone, muscle and nerves were being meticulously sliced away from his very essence. When he moved, his hands and knees sank into stinking mud that sucked and clung to him with a life of its own. He tried to crawl toward one figure that beckoned to him, outlined in a thin shaft of saffron light that came from above. It was torment to move. The pain in him was a wall that blocked all his efforts. He was drenched in sweat, but he shivered. He was exhausted. His mind was numb. But he kept crawling toward the beckoning figure.

  “Samuel ?”

  He saw the dead face, the gray eyes, the grayness everywhere around the figure like a shroud.

  “Sir,” he said.

  “Do you know me?”

  “You are Dickinson McFee, sir.”

  “So I was. Why do you follow me, Samuel? There is no loyalty in the world. Why do you want to find me?”

  “It’s my job, sir.”

  “You will die for your job, Samuel.”

  “That’s what I’m paid for.”

  “Is it just the money, then?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Patriotism is a passing thing. What one dies for today becomes a foolish cause tomorrow. Forget me.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do you see all these dead men? Do you know that you killed them all, Samuel?”

  “Yes, I know that.”

  “Does it trouble you?”

  “I can’t help it. Where are we, sir?”

  “She has us. Now go back, Samuel.”

  He did not want to ask the name. He could not go back.

  A terrible chill shook him and he collapsed into the mud.

  There was heat under him that burned away his skin and flesh and mind. He heard a woman's cold, sardonic laughter and he raised his head and saw her face, beautiful, beautiful, filled with beautiful evil, almond eyes amused, the fans of long lashes touching the lemon-colored skin of her cheek, the black hair coiled like snakes, held in place with tormented ivory combs in the shapes of dragons. He cried out and tried to reach her, and the face vanished and the light moved away from the dead face of General McFee and touched another face, a woman’s face, not decomposed like the others, but serene and lovely, precious, the best face in the world. And it was dead, and it was Deirdre. . . .

  He came up through the nightmare like a swimmer struggling up through stormy seas. The room in the Phoenicia was flooded with morning sunlight. Deirdre had pushed open the wooden shutters, letting the sun in. He lay quietly, still shivering, and saw McFee’s corpse and all the others, and he was aware of overwhelming relief at Deirdre’s figure at the window; he was aware, too, of a belly-quivering fear for her. He had been silent in the grip of his nightmare, so she was not aware of the dream.

  She turned, and her smile was radiant. “I let you sleep it off, darling.”

  “Thanks, Dee.” He looked at his watch. There were several new freighters in the harbor when he glanced through the open window. The Mediterranean was an aching blue. An Alitalia plane from Rome shook the morning air as it lowered for a landing. Hammersmith had come into the harbor, too.

  “Interested in breakfast?” Deirdre asked. “You need a shave, too, Sam.”

  �
�Shower, shave, breakfast. Have you any binoculars?” “Sam, please. No work yet.”

  But she sighed and rummaged for the glasses in the heavy Renaissance wardrobe and handed them to him. He studied Valetta Harbor with them for some time.

  “That yacht,” he said. “The one over by Lascaris Wharf. How long has it been in port?”

  She looked out the window with him. “Oh, that white one? The East Wind, from Hong Kong?” She shrugged. "It's been here since I arrived. Belongs to a wealthy Hong Kong merchant, a Chinese with nightclub interests all through the Philippines and Indonesia and Singapore. His name is Liu Tze Lee. Does it mean anything?”

  Durell studied the rakish lines of the white craft. At least six staterooms, he judged, with a squat diesel funnel, a marvelously sleek bow, a canopied deck aft, streamlined bridge. She could do twenty knots, he judged, with no effort. No one was visible aft, where lounge chairs and round tables gleamed under the white canvas awning. “Have you seen this Chinese?” he asked.

  “Once, on Kingsway, near the Law Courts. He was shopping with a swarm of Chinese servants, all chattering away on a holiday.” She sighed. “Nice to be that rich.” “What does he look like?”

  “Stout and jolly, like a little Buddha in a ice-cream suit and floppy Panama. Doesn’t look like the popular image of a theatrical entrepreneur. Is he important?”

  “He works for Hung. Maybe not willingly, but you can see where he’d be valuable to her—sending entertainers all over Southeast Asia, even to Europe, and some of them trained at espionage. Lots of important men would enjoy having lotus-faced Chinese singers in bed with them, while, they talked of how important they were, how big a job they happened to be on.”

  Deirdre said, “Did I literally miss the boat?”

  “No harm yet. But McFee may be aboard.”

  He took a hot shower and carried his gun into the bathroom. Deirdre was already dressed, wearing a modest skirt and high-necked blouse to conform with Malta’s Byzantine morality. The women in the streets were almost uniformly in black, and a steady clanging of church bells sounded everywhere. The hot sun washed out all color, creating a white cubist painting from the scene. He felt better for the long sleep, and finally his shivering from the nightmare passed.